Way back in 2016, Midnight Special filmmaker Jeff Nichols revealed that he was attached to a remake of the 1988 sci-fi buddy comedy Alien Nation. The project lingered for a few years before Nichols revealed that Disney, who inherited the IP thanks to acquiring 20th Century Fox, had passed on the concept and it seemed to be dead in the water. Now though, the studio has had a change of heart and seemingly wants Nichols to pivot his idea from a feature film reboot into a TV series. Nicols and his cinematographer Adam Stone appeared on a recent episode of the Team Deakins podcast (H/T SlashFilm) where they revealed the news.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Nichols confirmed it saying he was working on a series of the idea and reiterating the history of the idea, adding: “I then had this idea of how I could take that title but a situation that has nothing to do with the original movie, necessarily, and I got really excited about it…I spent three years building out an entire alien civilization and this situation and this setup and all these characters, and it’s really what I’ve been doing for a long time. We were set to go make it. It was going to be our next big challenge for Adam and I, which would be making a big, $100 million studio film, still in Arkansas. Disney bought Fox and killed it, which was a little soul-crushing, to say the least.”
He continued, “But they came and said, ‘Would you consider turning this into a series, potentially?’ So I have taken it and broken it into ten episodes, and it’s under consideration right now. Who knows, people in far more powerful positions than me are deciding that. One of the tricks is, I want to shoot it like a giant film, and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get away with that.”
Frankly it’s not surprising that Disney went back to Nicholas with an interest in bringing the property to life as a TV series. As the 2020 Disney Investor Day revealed, The Walt Disney Company is putting a lot of their resources and interest into streaming since most of that entire presentation was devoted to what content is in the works for Disney+ and Hulu. Coincidentally Alien Nation joins another Fox property that Disney announced for a TV series with Alien, based on the Ridley Scott franchise with Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley attached.
The original Alien Nation starred James Caan and Mandy Patinkin and was produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Richard Kobritz. The premise was that an enslaved alien race lands in the Mojave Desert, and there are quite a few of them. The Newcomers now live among humans, and police detective Matthew Sykes (Caan) ends up getting a Newcomer as a partner named Sam Francisco (Patinkin) after his partner dies. The two end up discovering a plot to use a drug concoction that helped enslave the aliens before to make them servants on Earth once more. The movie wasn’t a huge hit at the time, but it made enough to spawn a television series, though that only ran for one season.
